Artist Biography
Teresita Fernández (b. 1968, Miami, United States, based in New York, United States) challenges the traditional notion of the landscape through reframing it as a dynamic way to connect with the land, its native elements, and its inhabitants. Creating installations and sculptures that span subterranean and cosmic scales as well as national borders and psychological realms, she explores how we perceive and define place, power and identity.
Raised in Miami by parents who fled Cuba’s political unrest in 1959, Fernández honed a sensitivity towards observing the historical, social and cultural complexities that shape an environment. These layers inform her ‘stacked landscapes', created using carefully researched materials such as gold, iron ore, charcoal and other minerals often tied to histories of violence and colonialism. In Fernández’s monumental ceramic mosaic Caribbean Cosmos (2020), swirling forms suggest celestial skies, aerial views of hurricanes and circulatory systems of the body all at once. Its iridescent surface reflects its viewer, implicating them in issues of visibility and erasure that often occur in place-making.
Fernández obtained her BFA from the Florida International University, Miami in 1990 and her MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond in 1992. Her work is held in major collections including Benesse Art Site, Naoshima; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Seattle Art Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of Art, New York.
Notable solo exhibitions include Fire (United States of the Americas) (2021), Philadelphia Museum of Art; Elemental (2020), Phoenix Art Museum; Elemental (2019), Pérez Art Museum Miami; Autumn (…Nothing Personal) (2018), Harvard University, Cambridge; Nishijin Sky (2014), Kyoto University of Art and Design; As Above So Below (2014), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; Pivot Points V (2011), Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Focus Series (2011), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Blind Landscape (2011), Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland; and Stacked Waters (2009), Blanton Museum of Art, Austin. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including ALOHA NŌ (2025), 4th Hawai’i Triennial, Honolulu; and 1st Setouchi International Art Festival (2010), Seto Inland Sea.
Fernández had her residency at the STPI Workshop in 2010, resulting in the exhibition Night Writing (2011).